Jan 11 How to Pretend to Be Super Excited All of The Time: Your Guide to Sorority Recruitment

Screaming. Crying. Vaginal tearing. We're not talking about the miracle of birth here, we're talking about everyone's favorite five-day shitshow: sorority recruitment. Sorority recruitment is one of the times at Northwestern in which stress is at a yearly high. Hundreds of scantily clad freshman girls are marching through the quads, countless sorority sisters are giving compliments to strangers that are nicer than anything they've ever said to their families, and thousands of other Northwestern students are looking on in horror and amusement. The whole ordeal is a lot to handle. To help everyone through this hard time, Sherman Ave is here with a few tips to help get you through sorority recruitment, whether you're going through recruitment or just merely watching it from a distance.

1. Be Excited
If you're a freshman girl, you've probably never woken up and thought, "I want to spend my next five nights getting superficially judged by hundreds of strangers while standing in heels." And if you're a sister in a sorority, there's a good chance you never think, "Wow, it would be great to spend over twenty hours of my life cleaning a house and then being forced to meet and make judgments on hundreds of girls who may begin to cry if I say the wrong word." No matter which side you're on, you probably won't enjoy the process. However, in order to make through the week, you have to treat recruitment like you treat sex: fake it. Sorority recruitment is a lot easier when you're not that sad girl in the corner just trying to get through the night or "that bitch" sister glaring and judging all of the freshmen. If you pretend to be happy, you'll seem more inviting, meet more people, and maybe even actually enjoy it - but probably not.

2. Bring Food
For the girls going through recruitment and the sisters leading it, bringing food is a win-win situation. First, in the case that you don't like the food at a particular house, or you happen to be visiting a house or live at a house that isn't serving food, you will get hungry. Additionally, by having food with you, you can avoid being seen as another sorority girl starving herself for a bid - and you make even win brownie points (HA. FOOD PUN.) if you bring good food with you.
For all those merely watching, you should also have a snack with you, because these five days will compose the most exciting event of winter quarter. Ya know, because everyone will soon be crawling into their holes to hide from the winter, covered by their North Face shells.

3. Have Earplugs
It was the bid heard 'round the world. Last year, a girl in my dorm dropped her Theta bid - and I dropped to the ground with an exploded eardrum. Come 6:30 Tuesday evening, the Northwestern Campus will turn into a high-fashion war zone, with jackets and scarves being thrown asunder and girls screaming like they lost their legs. There will be twenty minutes of continuous screaming, followed by five minutes of crying, and twenty more minutes of screaming. So whether you're giving a bid, receiving a bid, or merely a casualty of your campus location (R.I.P. Members of Rogers House), you need ear plugs, ear muffs, and a whole lot of patience.